By Jeremy Mcdonald

Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com

SALEM, Ore.– The Blanchet Catholic Girls Basketball team showed a glimpse of their potential in Amity’s 55-22 PacWest Conference win Thursday night.

The Cavaliers settled into a rhythm in the second quarter after going down 18-1 after the first quarter to keep within 13 by halftime down 28-15.  Taking advantage of the lull, the Warrior defense to stay  in contention going into the halftime break.

“At the break in between the two quarters, our coach was like ‘ok guys wake up’.  It’s Dead Week at school so we’re all tired, so it was a snap, wake-up and get into it.  We  came together and were ‘ok, this is our time now’,” Blanchet’s Abby Weber said.  “Then at halftime we dipped down a bit.  Not like we were getting comfortable, but just dipped down a little bit and we had trouble coming back from it and they started the third quarter really strong.”

Weber scored seven of her team-high nine points in the second quarter to help spark Blanchet back into the game, but the halftime break favored Amity as both teams started the third quarter. 

As they did in the first quarter, the Warrior defense played tough and held the Cavs to two third quarter points while their offense scored 20 points to turn the 13-point lead into a 48-17 lead after three quarters.

“It was really big for us to come back on our defense because that’s where we want to be strong (at).  Second quarter defense was not there, but we came back out after halftime and we played better defense,” Amity’s Mya Haarsma said.  “We need to make sure we stay positive.  Keep our heads up and play like we know how to play.  That’s all we can do.”

 Haarsma had a game-high 16 points as the Warriors travel to Santiam Christian Friday night at 6pm before returning to PacWest Conference play Tuesday against Yamhill-Carlton as they look to clean up the little things defensively.

“We need to work really hard in practice.  Focus, pay attention and get things done that need to be done,” Haarsma said. 

For Blanchet, who’s off until Tuesday’s road trip to Scio, it’s a matter of stringing together their consistency as they continue to piece together their rotations.

“For us, we’re pretty even through our whole bench.  So it’s kind of hard day-to-day to see who’s going to work the best consistently together,” Weber said. “It was a different five than it was last week.  I think for us, we start off really slow because we got to find that five that work together at that moment and then once we get it, we kind of get rolling.”

Ellie McMullen and Sara Grove each scored 13 points for the Warriors in the win while Alexis Jensen contributed four for the Cavs in the Thursday night match-up.

Photos By Jeremy McDonald